White Plains Linen Nearly Finished Consolidating Operation

PEEKSKILL, N.Y. — White Plains Linen has consolidated its current facilities, including two reconstructed buildings and 30,000 square feet of new construction, is transitioning into the new facility and expects to be fully operational by month’s end, the company reports. Once running at full capacity, the operation will turn out 1 million pounds of restaurant linens per week.

White Plains invested $6 million in construction and equipment. The project will drastically reduce its energy usage by 25% immediately; after converting the majority of gas-burning equipment to steam heat, the company’s carbon footprint will be reduced by 70% by the end of 2013. This steam heat will be purchased from an outside source that converts municipal waste to energy.

White Plains Linen began designing the cutting-edge facility in 2009 in an effort to reduce its environmental footprint, no small task for a large industrial laundry service. It has installed equipment to reclaim heat from wastewater and a system to cut water usage up to 60% by reusing clean rinse water and collecting and filtering an estimated 2.5 million gallons of rainwater annually, plus it’s put in a complex system of conveyors and monorails to streamline its operations.

“When planning the new facility, our goal was to correct all the inefficiencies of the past and to make our operations sustainable for decades to come,” says Leonard Labonia, vice president of operations. “Our new designs optimize every Btu and gallon of water. Automation and labor savings was the prime motivator for the project, but energy costs have always been the wild card. When trying to predict laundering costs for our customers, the energy savings and green aspects of the new facility have taken on a life of its own.”

The Peekskill Industrial Development Association (IDA) has provided tax and other considerations to give the new facility a home in its city.